Trailing by a stack of votes that seems insurmountable by normal recount standards, Republicans are laying the groundwork for removing votes — how many is unknown — from the 2.1 million cast for governor during the Nov. 2 election.

Republican candidate Tom Emmer on Wednesday asked the state high court to wade into the recount for the first time, seeking a ruling ordering counties to perform a little-known after-hours election procedure called reconciliation, which involves comparing the number of ballots to the number of voters who signed in on Election Day.

“This is a potential game-changer,” state GOP Chairman Tony Sutton said. “This is the law. We’re not asking (counties) to do something extraordinary.”

The move could delay the recount planned to get under way Nov. 29. Democratic-Farmer-Labor candidate Mark Dayton leads Emmer by more than 8,700 votes. Dayton’s recount team objected, accusing Republicans of trying to cast doubt on a clean election.

“We are concerned that this is really about trying to delay this recount from taking place,” said Ken Martin, Dayton’s recount director.

State law calls for election judges at local precincts to compare the number of people who signed the Election Day voter roster with the number of ballots counted by voting machines. If there are excess ballots, judges are supposed to randomly withdraw the difference and remove those ballots from the tally.

In an effort to get the Supreme Court to order just that, Republicans acquired affidavits from 11 election judges, mainly from the Twin Cities, who said that reconciliation procedures were not followed on Election Night.

Ten of the 11 judges are clear that some reconciliation did take place, albeit by tallying the ballot receipts handed out to voters and comparing those against the voting machines. Minnesota administrative rules indicate that using voter receipts is acceptable.

Emmer spokesman Carl Kuhl said judges still erred. “It’s not what the law says,” Kuhl said.

There is no timeline for when or if the Supreme Court would rule on the case, but the state canvassing board is set to vote on whether a recount is needed — all but certain given the tight margin between the two candidates — on Tuesday, just five days from now.

Most of the affidavits were from Hennepin County, where election judges are trained by city, not county, elections officials. Hennepin County elections manager Rachel Smith declined comment, saying the county would publicly respond to the suit today.

Ramsey County elections manager Joe Mansky was also cautious with his words, citing the pending suit.

“I can tell you that our position is that our judges were properly trained on what they need to do,” Mansky said.

Republicans have questioned numerous issues related to the Nov. 2 vote, none of which has illuminated a path to victory for Emmer. Democrats have pointed out that no statewide recount has flipped a race where the vote margin is as wide as Minnesota’s and that under state law, Emmer can waive the recount.

Wednesday’s court filing is another indication that Emmer — who did not attend Wednesday’s news conference at the Republican Party’s St. Paul headquarters — has no intention of doing so.

Yet Democrats and even some Republicans have been skeptical of Emmer’s hopes.

In 2008, Al Franken won the recount despite Sen. Norm Coleman’s initial lead. Properly adding mistakenly rejected absentee votes to the totals brought Franken into the lead. But with just 3,000 rejected absentee ballots statewide this year, even if all of those votes were for Emmer, he would not close the margin by half.

Local elections officials have also said they believe voters were more cautious in 2010 after all the scrutiny on ballots in 2008, limiting the chances that valid votes were missed by voting machines on Election Day and would surface during the recount.

That leaves removing votes as perhaps Emmer’s biggest hope of overturning Dayton’s lead. Republicans cited a 2009 news article quoting Secretary of State Mark Ritchie saying there was a difference between votes and the number of voters in the registration database of about 30,000, down from 40,000. Elections officials have said the voter registration database should not be used as an accurate vote count.

“A disparity of even a portion of 40,000 votes could significantly influence, if not determine, a close election such as the 2010 gubernatorial election and impending recount,” Emmer’s lawyers wrote in court papers.

Yet it is statistically unlikely that removing even that number of votes — approximately 10 for every voting precinct in Minnesota — would tip the election. Since Dayton and Emmer have a little more than 43 percent of the vote each, removing ballots at random should reduce their totals about equally.

In fact, the number of removed votes would have to come overwhelmingly from Dayton for Emmer to close a nearly 9,000-vote gap.

The issues raised by Republicans have fed Democratic suspicions that the real goal is to delay the planned swearing-in of the next governor on Jan. 3, a move that appears to mean Gov. Tim Pawlenty stays in office after Republicans take control of the state Legislature.

“We think, at the end of the day, the Republicans are grasping at straws and trying to delay this election and this recount from occurring,” Martin said.

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